Hans L Zetterberg lectures at City University, Stockholm in the course
"The European Origin"

The Demography of Europe

This lecture takes population statistics as a starting point for a
discussion of contemporary social change in Europe.

The total population 1995 of a broadly conceived Europe (excluding
Asian parts of Russia and Turkey) is 690 million. The most spectacular
change anticipated for the next two decades is the growth of Turkey to
outdistance Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom as the largest regional
population outside of Russia.

The market economy in Europe has slowed down its population growth; the
Europeans are at present 12 per cent of the world's population, down from
27 in 1900. Migration driven by economic motives now affects the
population changes in Europe as much as the balance of births and deaths.
A liberal but orderly process of internal European migration is
an emerging responsibility in the wake of the victory of the market
economy over the command economy. The prospects for a liberal and orderly external
migration into Europe from the Muslim world and from Black Africa remain
dim.

The German-speaking Europe contains a new large, fast-growing, unified
market of senior citizens who are rich, active, and in good health. The
young profile of the population in Eastern Europe is helpful to its
current difficult process of change.

The lecture includes a discussion of Europe's ethnic minorities and
nation states, a situation which may call for a redefinition of majority
rights in European democracy.

Hans
L Zetterberg, Professor of Sociology, is responsible for this lecture.
You may check his curriculum vitae by clicking on his name.

Hans L Zetterberg begins:

The European Continent - What is Inside and Outside?

We consider Europe to be a "continent" out of respect for its
history and civilization. In geographical fact, it is no more a continent
than, say, India, which in the 1990s has about the same population. Europe
is an extension of the great Eurasian land-mass. Its three waterfronts are
natural borders: the Arctic Sea in the north, the Atlantic Ocean in the
west, and the Mediterranean in the south. The eastern border to Asia is
less clear-cut.

It is usually agreed that Europe ends along the Ural mountain range and
along the Ural River to the Caspian Sea. For analytical purposes we should
divide Russia into one eastern and one western part with the Ural mountain
range as the natural divide. This division, unfortunately, has few
counterparts in Russian statistics, although for the Russian peoples it
may represent a kind of psychological border. As a rule of thumb, somewhat
more than two thirds of the Russian population of 148 millions fall within
Europe Proper. In our review here we will include the entire Russia in the
European statistics; as we lack separate statistics for its European and
Asian parts.

Another ambivalence is found in TransCaucasus, that is Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia. They are sometimes counted in Europe, sometimes in
Asia. We will do the latter. The republics are small. In 1995 Armenia had
3.8 million, Azerbaijan 7.6 and Georgia had 5.4 million.

The geographical divide of the Strait of Bosporous separates Europe and
Asia and divides Turkey. Most schoolbooks put Turkey in a special region
called Asia Minor, but its geography and economy and politics make Turkey
closer to Europe than to Asia. Turkey today is Muslim, but it also has
within its borders many remains of ancient Greek culture and it is the
spiritual home of the Greek Orthodox tradition of Christianity. Several
million Turks, mostly from the eastern regions of the country, have
migrated into European countries in recent years, and perhaps one fifth of
them have returned to live Turkey after absorbing more or less of the
European way of life. This migration pattern has brought Turkey closer to
Europe. Turkey's population in 1995 is 63 million of which some 50 million
live in geographical Asia.

Europe with Turkey and Russia then has in 1995 a total population of
791 million. The rule of thumb is that Europe without the Asian parts of
Russia and Turkey has a about 100 million less, that is to say 690
million.

Europe's Past and Future Population

A European population figure of 690 million people sounds like a very
big number. But it is only 13 per cent of the world population.

Population of World Regions 1800-2100

Europe's share of the world population was 21 per cent in the year 1800.
It rose to 27 percent in the year 1900 when Europe was at the peak of its
power. In the year 2100, Europe's population will be about 7 per cent of
the world total.

Whatever aspiration for the world that the Europeans may have for the
coming millennium, it will be the aspiration of a small minority. The image
of Europe is bound to include exclusive and perhaps privileged qualities
rather than universal ones.

The Country Roster

In the mid-1990s Liechtenstein and San Marina, each with 30.000
inhabitants, are the smallest countries in Europe. Russia with a
population of 147.7 million, of whom about 100 million live in Europe is
the largest.

The dominant country populationwise in the center of Europe is Germany,
which after the unification has 81.7 million inhabitants. Germany is
significant step ahead of the other European powers such as France (58.4),
United Kingdom (58.8), and Italy (57.3). Turkey, however, looms lager than
the latter with a population of 63.9 million. Click on Europe on this map
to see the figures for all countries.

The population in the countries in European Union in 1995 comprises 354
million, or 45 per cent of the European total. It is unfair to many
millions to speak of the EU as "Europe."

Some Extremes

Europe includes the world's northernmost population concentration that
can be counted in millions. It is found in Finland, with a population of 5
million, all living very civilized above latitude 60 north.

A look at a population density map for the world does not single out
Europe as a whole as overcrowded. There are exceptionally densely settled
countries such as the Netherlands, with 1187 persons per square mile, and
Belgium with 866. But the visitor there does not get the sense of city
crowding so common in Africa, Asia or Latin America.

Slowing Down Population Growth

Europe has a slower population growth than other continents. A general
measure of the rate of population increase is the number of years it takes
for a population to double in size. At current growth rates the world's
population doubles in 46 years, while Europe's doubles in 445 years. This
table shows the doubling rates for the various continents. The numbers
come from the Population Reference Bureau in Washington DC, a private
organization concerned about population control. They are exaggerated as a
prognosis for underdeveloped regions since it is unrealististic, as we
soon shall see, to believe that current rates will prevail there.

Region

Population 1995

Doubling time in years at current growth rate

Africa

732

24

North America

295

93

South America

486

33

Asia

3437

37

Oceania

29

57

Europe

890

266

Europe stands out in this table. The slower population growth in Europe
has a long history, dating back to medieval times. William Petersen
describes it in this way:

Before the development of modern industry, Europe was already
distinguished from the other great civilizations by the control that its
family system imposed on the rate of population growth. In classical India
or China, for example, marriage was all but universal and typically took
place at puberty or shortly thereafter. In Europe a quite different
pattern evolved, varying from country to country but with certain
characteristics common at least to the Western region. Guilds generally
did not permit apprentices to take a wife until they had finished their
training, and this regulation meant that a substantial portion of the
urban population had to postpone marriage for a considerable number of
years after it was physiologically possible. In agriculture, numerically
the most important sector of the late medieval and early modern economies,
farmhands were almost members of a farmer's family, and thus were under no
social or economic pressure to marry early. Men were induced to put off
assuming parental responsibilities until they had acquired the means to
care for a wife and children. This meant in many cases that they never
married, but lived as fully accepted members of a household headed by an
older brother, who because he had inherited the family plot was able to be
a "husband" (which means, literally, householder). As a result
of this personally onerous but socially effective system of birth control,
Europe's population generally did not press as heavily on the subsistence
available to it as in the Asian civilization s; compared with China or
India, Europe was relatively free of great famines. And at the beginning
of the modern era, the continent was still relatively sparsely populated.

With the advent of market economies, industrialization, urbanization,
education, and modern medicine, death rates in Europe fell, and its
population grew rapidly. A generation or two later birth rates also fell,
and Europe reached its present status of slow population growth.

Europe shows a pattern of demographic transformation that the rest of
the world now follows.

In Europe, the urban population is in the 1990s as high as 74 per cent
of the total. In Britain, the oldest industrialized country, it is 90 per
cent. In Russia it is 73 per cent. The comparable figures for North and
Latin America are 74 and 69 per cent, respectively. They contrast markedly
with the Asian figure of 33 per cent urbanites and the African of 31 per
cent. Click on Europe to obtain detailed numbers. Or, if you want to read
them as a table, click
here.

A mirror image of urbanization is found in the statistics on
agricultural labor. The transformation from an agricultural economy of
sustenance to an urban market economy is the key to gross population
control. In such an economy both women and men have education and jobs.
The desired number of children is balanced by the desired education, the
desired job, and the desired living standard and life style.

Most writers think of this transformation from rural life to an
urbanized and industrialized life as a seamy process of human degradation.
Let us quote from a Nobel laureate who also sees the positive side:

The increase of population . . . stems from the fact that people
living on peripheries of market economies, while already profiting from
their participation in them (through, for example, access to more advanced
medicine, to better information of all sorts, and to advanced economic
institutions and practices), have nonetheless not adapted fully to the
traditions, morality, and customs of these economies. For example, they
still may practice customs of procreation stemming from circumstances
outside the market economy where, for instance, the first response of poor
people to a slight increase of wealth had been to produce a number of
descendants at least sufficient to provide for them in their old age.
These old customs are now gradually, and in some places even quickly,
disappearing, and these peripheral groups, particularly those closest to
the core, are absorbing traditions that allow them better to regulate
their propagation. After all, the growing commercial centers become
magnets in part just because they provide models of how to achieve through
imitation what many people desire.

….Of course it may be hard for some to accept that those living in
these shanty towns deliberately chose them over the countryside (about
which people have such romantic feelings) as places of sustenance. Yet, as
with the Irish and English peasants Engels found in the Manchester slums
of his own time, that is what happened.

(F. A. Hayek, "The Extended Order and Population Growth"
in The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, volume 1, The Fatal Conceit,
Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1988, p. 129.)

A Stable Population?

The fact that the world-wide transformation to market economy in time
makes for a more manageable population growth is a major cause for
demographic optimism. We are not approaching an earth with standing room
only. Death rates have everywhere declined for the past two generations.
There is little doubt that, beginning with the living generation, the
world's birth rate has now entered a period of decline. Eventually, in a
market economy, a stable replacement level of fertility is reached when
the average woman in her lifetime gives birth to 2.1 children. The rate
then goes up or down according to market preferences and the resources of
the world.

A market economy is not the only way to achieve population stability
but it is the most voluntary way if you have the patience to wait out the
course of the process. China has instead an accelerated program that
limits the number of children by legislation.

Europe has already achieved the stable level of two children in a
women's lifetime As shown in the map below, most European countries are
below that level; click the map to read them as a table.

Approximately 35-45 years after a 2.1 level is recorded the total
population becomes stationary. At this level, couples merely replace
themselves and do not augment successive generations. If the rest of the
world follows Europe's lead so that the average of two children per women
occurs worldwide by 2040, the world's ultimate population will be some 11
billion. That plateau will be reached by the year 2100. Some demographers
have calculations that end up with a lower final number.

Support of family planning to accelerate the decline is assumed in all
the calculations. It is, however, difficult to anticipate the exact future
level of contraception, particularly in the Muslim world. It is noteworthy
that even the full availability of the best contraceptives in the most
educated and secularized nations does not at all seem to suffice to make
every pregnancy welcome. Many abortions occur in European countries,
particularly in the eastern ones.

Table 3 shows the ten largest populations (in millions) in Europe in
1990 and 2020.

1990

2025

1. Russia

1. Russia

153.1

2. Germany

79.5

2. Turkey

91.8

3. Italy

57.7

3. Germany

79.3

4. UK

57.4

4. France

63.6

5. Turkey

56.7

5. UK

62.5

6. France

56.4

6. Italy

54.4

7. Ukraine

53.0

7. Ukraine

54.0

8. Spain

39.7

8. Poland

34.6

9. Poland

37.8

9. Spain

40.5

10. Romania

23.3

10. Romania

21.2

The growth of Turkey to outdistance Italy, the United Kingdom, and
Germany and to have the largest population in Europe outside Russia is the
most spectacular change we can anticipate in the Top Ten Population List
in the next few decades. Italy drops from third to sixth place in this
list.

Several countries besides Germany and Italy can expect declines in
populations between 1990 and 2025, for example Denmark, Finland, Ireland,
Belgium, Romania, and Portugal.

Europe has also two areas with population doubling rates that are above
the world average: Albania and Turkey, both Muslim areas. This map shows
doubling times for the continents and for the European countries. Or, if
you want to read them as a table, click
here

We see that a score of countries in Europe will never double their
populations, given their present demographic realities.

The Age Structure

Populations with no growth or slow growth get a top-heavy age pyramid,
that is, there are more elderly. (See Map 5.) Sweden has a higher
proportion over 65 than any other European country; almost every fifth
Swede (17 per cent) is 65 or over. The German-speaking countries also show
a profile of old age. They constitute the largest market for senior
citizens in Europe: about 15 million people over 65, most of them
relatively well off, and in good health, and with active life styles.
England, France, and Italy also have high proportions of elderly.

Map 5. Over 65 years of age as percent of total population

Africa

3

North America

13

Latin America

5

Asia

5

Oceania

10

Europe

14

NORTHERN EUROPE

Denmark

15

Estonia

13

Finland

14

Iceland

11

Ireland

11

Latvia

13

Lithuania

12

Norway

16

Sweden

17

United Kingdom

16

WESTERN EUROPE

Austria

15

Belgium

16

France

15

Germany

15

Liechtenstein

10

Luxembourg

14

Netherlands

13

Switzerland

15

EASTERN EUROPE

Belarus

12

Bulgaria

15

Czech Republic

13

Hungary

14

Moldavia

9

Poland

11

Romania

12

Russia

12

Slovakia

11

Ukraine

14

SOUTHERN EUROPE

Albania

6

Bosnia­Herzegovina

7

Croatia

12

Greece

13

Italy

16

Macedonia

8

Malta

11

Portugal

14

Slovenia

12

Spain

15

Serbia, Montenegro

11

Turkey

5

The large share of elderly are less of a strain on the medical system
than most people believe. Medical costs do not rise in proportion to the
number of years we live as senior citizens. For most, it is only the very
last year of life that entails the high medical costs. And each individual
has only one such year.

In Eastern Europe the proportion of the over-65s is much smaller,
usually between 5 and 10 per cent of the total population.

A bulge in the number of pensioners will occur around 2010 when the war
boom children retire. This will put a severe strain on unfunded public
pension systems. Too few of working age will be called upon to pay for the
many of retirement age.

The young in Europe (Map 6) are most in evidence in Albania and Turkey,
where more than one third of the population is under 15. In Ireland more
than a quarter are as young. The nations of Eastern Europe have otherwise
the younger populations. This is comforting because they now need all the
adaptability of youth. The age structure of Eastern Europe is one of the
few causes for optimism about the region.

Map 6. Under 15 years of age as percent of total population

Africa

44

NorthAmerica

22

LatinAmerica

35

Asia

32'

Oceania

26

Europe

NORTHERN EUROPE

Denmark

17

Estonia

20

Finland

19

Iceland

25

Ireland

25

Latvia

21

Lithuania

22

Norway

19

Sweden

19

United Kingdom

19

WESTERN EUROPE

Austria

18

Belgium

18

France

20

Germany

16

Liechtenstein

19

Luxembourg

18

Netherlands

18

Switzerland

18

EASTERN EUROPE

Belarus

22

Bulgaria

19

Czech Republic

19

Hungary

18

Moldavia

27

Poland

23

Romania

21

Russia

21

Slovakia

23

Ukraine

20

SOUTHERN EUROPE

Albania

33

Bosnia­Herzegovina

23

Croatia

20

Greece

18

Italy

15

Macedonia

24

Malta

22

Portugal

18

Slovenia

19

Spain

17

Serbia ,Montenegro

22

Turkey

33

Germany, so rich and successful in other respects, lacks youngsters.
Only 16 per cent of the Germans are under 15. It looks as if the Germans
have not really believed that their economic miracle would last to include
children and grandchildren.

Welfare in Demographic Terms

A long life is a traditional sign of welfare. Life expectancy at birth
is 74 years in Europe, 75 in North America, 69 in South America, 52 in
Africa, and 63 in Asia. Life in politically underdeveloped societies is no
longer "nasty, brutish, and short," as Hobbes said; it is nasty,
brutish, and long.

The most widely used demographic measure of welfare is infant
mortality. Statistics for infant mortality are readily available for most
countries. It has also been found to be highly correlated with more
sophisticated measures of general welfare. This clickable map shows North
America and Europe leading the world in child welfare.

Migration

So far we have dealt with the balance between births and deaths as
determinant of populations. Historically, this balance has been more
important than the balance between emigration and immigration. Yet, Europe
may look forward to a period in which migration looms large. In the coming
decades, migrations may have a greater effect on the size of population
than natural increase. Eleven per cent of the population of France is
foreign born; eight per cent of the people in Great Britain are born
overseas. These are high numbers by international standards. The
traditional country of immigration, the United States, has six per cent
residents who are foreign born.

There are push and pull factors in migration. Among the pulls, i.e.,
the attraction of Europe, is its riches. GNP per capita in Europe was
$12,170 in 1994. North America had $19,480 and remains the first choice of
the economic migrant. Latin America had $1,930, Africa $600, and Asia
$1,430.

The economic map of Europe shows many rich regions and many poor ones,
which encourages internal migration. The large economies have a special
appeal to young people in the poorer regions. When you look, not at
geography and people but at money and the size of the national economies,
the map of Europe in BNP-scale in 1994 looks like this:

Internal migration

The push factors in internal European migration have in the 1990s
become stronger due to the plight of the Eastern European economies. Its
typical factory town in Communist days with, say, 60,000 inhabitants and a
"combinat" with 4,000 to 10,000 employees during the 1980s used
to ship two thirds of its output to the Soviet Union. The managers had
little knowledge of the true prices of their raw materials and energy;
they lacked firm knowledge of and feedback from the markets of their
finished products; they had no knowledge of finance. A ministry in the
capital handled everything except the straight production. These factories
have now lost most orders from their main customer, the former Soviet
Union. Their products do not yet have the sophistication and quality to
compete well on the Western markets. It is catastrophic, not only for the
factory, but for the whole town.

There are a hundred such towns in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and
throughout the former Comecon block, and many more with other profiles but
similar predicaments. They do not have a rich uncle like their
counterparts in Eastern Germany. Here a strong push is generated to
internal migration in Europe. The young and the educated are the first to
move. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 about two million
Europeans have moved from east to west in peak years.

How green is the grass across the fence? How much richer are the people
on the other side of the border? Such calculations are easy to make since
measures of GNP per capita are available. Some are summarized on the
clickable map below.

An average Finn is 7.1 times richer than his Russian neighbor, an
average Swede 10.9 times than the people across the Baltic. A German is
10.4 times richer than a Pole, and 7.9 times richer than a Czech. An
Austrian is 6.5 times richer than a Hungarian, and an Italian is at least
50 times richer than an Albanian. You may cheer this as the victory of the
market economy over the command economy, but it is a victory with a
demographic price and with grave responsibilities. Europe must now strive
to attain an orderly process of internal migration.

External migration

The economic forces driving external migration into Europe from North
Africa are practically as strong as the forces driving the well-known
migration across the Rio Grande in America. The average US citizen is 10.9
times richer that the average Mexican. The Arabs in Morocco, Tunisia, and
Algeria who move to the nearest countries across the Mediterranean are
pulled by the fact that the Spaniard is 10.3, the Frenchman is 6.6 and the
Italian is 10.8 times richer there than the average citizen in their
respective old home lands.

South of the Sahara is Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria, with 119
million inhabitants 1995 but with an anticipated population of 273 million
in 2020, making Nigeria a larger country than any European. These numbers
are a reminder that in a longer perspective Europe faces a much stronger
immigration pressure from Black Africa.

The immigration to Europe will increasingly come from Islamic areas. A
Muslim world of high fertility surrounds much of the European peninsula
with its low fertility. The Muslims of the world will soon number one
billion people. Their doubling time is 25 years. Most Muslims live in
eastern Asia. Thus, Europe is not the only target for the population
pressure from the Islamic world.

We cannot lock out all the poor peoples at our gates, nor can we
encourage racism and xenophobia by permitting unlimited immigration. The
free movement of people across the internal borders of the EC is a
cornerstone of the European Community. The prospects for a liberal
internal migration within the entire Europe are at best fair; the
prospects for a liberal external immigration are very dim.

The Nationalities of Europe

Europe has hundreds of ethnic minorities ranging from the Lapps of the
north (the only nomadic people in Europe) to the Welsh in the west, the
Ukrainians in the East, and the Andalusians in the south.

Europe does not assimilate its ethnic groups as the United States does.
There is no "European Creed" that commands the loyalty of the
various Europeans as the "American Creed" commands the loyalty
of US citizens of different ethnic backgrounds. To be
"un-European" is merely to be different or odd, while to be
"un-American" is to be a traitor to the creed.

The map of the major European nationalities has not changed much in the
last 100 years. Stalin did move some people around. Some smaller groups
have assimilated or moved, for example, the Swedes in Estonia. Many ethnic
Germans in eastern Europe have moved home. But in the main, we have no
difficulty in recognizing the distribution of nationalities in Europe at
the end of the twentieth century from their distribution at the beginning
of the twentieth century. There are still the Turks in Bulgaria and the
Hungarians in Romania, to mention two hot items in today's news. A map
from The Times Atlas of World History gives details from the year 1900.

The Enlightenment of the 18th century embraced the idea that ethnic
differences are unimportant compared to the common human heritage the
destiny of which is a universal civilization. In the same vein, when
nationalism became rampant in the 19th century, many saw it as mere
tribalism revived and written large. This view is too superficial to
political science and sociology.

Ethnicity became a major political force. During the past 150
years, as a result of wars and of political negotiations, the national
borders in Europe have changed into greater conformity with the major
ethnic groupings . Study the series of maps illustrating this
central phenomenon of European history in modern times. The background to
all maps is the ethnic distribution in 1900.

Behind the political force of nationalism lies a sociological fact that
the belonging to a given (maybe in some measure constructed) community,
with given ties of language, traditions, historical memories (true or
false), creates a strong social identity. To deny people this identity is
a serious deprivation, perhaps as serious as depriving them of shelter and
freedom of movement. Whether we like it or not, to celebrate ethnicity is
more natural for mankind than to celebrate faith in reason.

True, you can yourself choose to suppress your ethnic identity. If you
shake off your ethnic ties to become a cosmopolitan, others may
nevertheless remember your background. In one of the most tragic periods
of recent European history, all Jews, even the most collaborating, or
secularized, or nationally integrated, or cosmopolitan, were Jews in the
eyes of the ruling Nazis.

The Problems of Multi-Ethnic States

Can multi-ethnic states survive in Europe in our times? The track
record for the past 150 years is poor. Europe's two most multi-ethnic
states, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, have recently collapsed. In
Bosnia, the Dayton peace accord of 1996 calls for a multiethnic state, but
the voters support parties that want separate states. Czechoslovakia has
peacefully split along ethnic lines. Switzerland, by contrast, does very
well. We also see achievements in Finland, and progress on crutches in
Belgium.

Perhaps the rest of Europe can learn something from Switzerland, our
most successful federation. Within the Swiss state, the Germans, French,
Italians, and Romanos can remain separate peoples. The Germans constitute
about 70 per cent of the Swiss. If the country were a simplistic
democracy, this German majority would always rule. Ethnic conflicts would
then be the order of the day. The French would secede and declare
independence, perhaps also the Italians.

There is a built-in conflict between democratic majority rule and the
aspirations held by unassimilated ethnic minorities. Switzerland has
solved this conflict by federating cantons most of which are ethnically
homogeneous.

The solution to an ethnic conflict is not found in the attitude of the
minority to the state, but must be found in the attitude of the majority.
Brutally put, the majority must not exercise its full democratic rights!
The majority ethnic group must make clear to the minority that the
minority is so valuable that it has the same rights as the majority, and
preferably even greater rights than the majority. A multi-ethnic
federation will work best when the minority feels that it gets more than
its proportional share of the bonanzas of the federated state.

Outright celebrations of ethnicity in a multi-ethnic society should be
confined to the private sector; to promote them with federal funds may be
as divisive as promoting a special religious faith with tax money. Taxes
should be low so that civil society will retain resources for ethnic
pursuits in the form of museums, song festivals, literature and art, et
cetera.

Henry Steele Commager, the American historian, maintains that no form
of government is as difficult as the federation. He thinks of the success
of federation in the United States as a greater achievement than Pax
Americana. He thinks the federation entails more of a complicated process
than the creation of American prosperity. Even on American soil,
federation has been problematic. The union split over slavery into civil
war. The federation created by the southern states did not survive.

We have to develop European democracy to cope with multi-ethnic
territories. Today democracy represents the right of the majority to rule
over an ethnic minority. Tomorrow it must also be some rights for the
ethnic minority to be protected from the rule of the majority. Then, the
prospects of European federations will be auspicious.

Here ends the lecture. Thank you for your attention!

The lectures in this course "The European Origin" at City
University on Stockholm